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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26307442">Listen Carefully for Death</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutonianshores/pseuds/plutonianshores'>plutonianshores</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>1917 (Movie 2019)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Blow Jobs, Hand Jobs, M/M, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 10:09:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,808</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26307442</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutonianshores/pseuds/plutonianshores</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The war follows the Blake brothers home</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Joseph Blake/Tom Blake</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>39</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>52</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>RelationShipping 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Listen Carefully for Death</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/reine_des_corbeaux/gifts">reine_des_corbeaux</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Haven't read any of your lovely comments because I was at work, but i hope all of my fans will enjoy the other Tom/Joseph fics i have planned :)</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>When that private had come to find him, Joseph had thought, for one terrifying moment, that Tom had died. He’d known in the abstract that his brother could die and he wouldn’t find out for days, maybe longer, but it wasn’t until Schofield’s message that the fear became ever-present.</p><p>"He’s been taken to hospital," Schofield had said, and Joseph’s legs nearly gave out. He’d been stabbed, Joseph found out, trying to help an enemy soldier. Of course he bloody had, Tom had always been too kind-hearted for his own good. He’d bled something horrible, but he was alive. Alive, and headed to a field hospital, and God willing out of France.</p><p>Tom wrote Joseph while he recuperated. Joseph read every letter until the paper began to grow soft from overhandling, clinging to every reminder that on the day he’d written, Tom was alive. His men thought them letters from a lover, and he couldn’t bring himself to correct them. Couldn’t have them thinking he’d gone soft.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>They didn’t send Tom home. His letters grew less frequent, and Joseph couldn’t blame him, but the absence still made the fear swell up in his throat like bile. He wondered if Tom felt the same, or if he’d managed to stay blissfully unaware of his brother’s mortality. Joseph suspected his fear might be an elder brother’s curse. He spent his days, at least the part not spent charging into battle or huddling terrified in the trenches, waiting for the ever-less-frequent letters to arrive and cursing the men who had begun this damned war.</p><p>When the armistice came, it felt like a dream. Joseph couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d be called back to the front line any moment, or that he’d arrive home to find Tom had died long ago and word had gotten lost on its way to him. Even after his feet were safely planted on the Blake farm with Tom stood beside him, face pinched and clothes dusty but very much alive, there was still a voice in the back of Joseph’s head saying it was all a dream, that he’d wake up back in the mud with shells howling over him.</p><p>Joseph had deployed during harvest season, and he’d had the vague feeling that he would come home to find the trees frozen in time, full of cherries ready to be picked. That they were bare seemed wrong. He’d been plucked out of his life and both he and what he’d left behind had changed irrevocably, and Joseph wasn’t sure what to do with himself. There was no farm work left for the season, and his only attempt at traveling to the city had proved loud and overwhelming. Their mother doted on Joseph and Tom enough to stifle him, dancing around the war in every conversation except when guests wanted to see their medals.</p><p>His bed felt too soft, and too isolated. He was used to sleeping in the mud with his fellow soldiers snoring around him, one ear cocked for gunshots or the shouts of his superiors. It felt wrong to sleep through the night under a clean quilt, and even when he managed to drift off, phantom gunshots would awaken him in the middle of the night. He kept quiet when he woke, silence drilled into him on the front lines.</p><p><br/>
<br/>
</p><p>Tom <em>didn’t</em> keep quiet at night, and in a way, that helped. Joseph had always been able to hear his brother at night and, he assumed, Tom could hear him as well – the perils of thin walls. An unspoken gentleman’s agreement to avoid mentioning any incriminating noises had carried them through adolescence, but now, with the silence that hung around them during the day, Joseph felt he perhaps ought to say something. During the day, when they were eating meals under their mother’s watchful eye or wandering the orchard in silence, that resolve slipped away. Only at night, with a single wall separating him from his brother, did Joseph ever consider breaking the silence.</p><p>Tom seemed to sleep more than Joseph, though not necessarily better. He whimpered in his sleep, the sounds quiet but audible during Joseph’s endless sleepless nights staring at the ceiling. It would be a matter of a few steps to wake Tom, ask him what he dreamt of. Did he see the same corpses as Joseph? Did he also wake up expecting to be choking on blood? Joseph hated that Tom had returned as damaged as him, but it made some small part of him happy to know he wasn’t alone.</p><p>It was one of those nights, sitting up in bed with his heart racing after hearing a nonexistent mortar exploding over his head, that Joseph heard his brother screaming. A full-throated scream, none of the stifled whimpers Joseph had grown used to. He’d managed to convince himself that ignoringTom was the best choice, that trying to talk about this or shake him out of his nightmares would only lead to hurt feelings and awkwardness. But he wasn’t sure he wanted to ignore this, or that Tom would want him to. Before Joseph could think twice, he was out of his bed and sliding open the door to Tom’s bedroom.</p><p>Tom was still asleep, clutching his quilt as if someone was trying to tear it away from him, his face twisted into a horrible scowl. Joseph gingerly sat down on the edge of Tom’s bed, setting a careful hand on his leg. He’d meant to wake Tom gently, but Tom jerked awake with a shout, staring at Joseph with wide and glazed eyes.</p><p>"It’s just me," Joseph said, trying his best to sound soothing. "You’ve had a nightmare."</p><p>The fear on Tom’s face faded, replaced by shame. "I didn’t mean to wake you," he mumbled, voice still rough with sleep. Joseph wanted to reach out and comfort Tom, but he couldn’t bring himself to – Tom was in his pants and nothing else, and for all that they’d worked and swam and bathed together in various states of undress over the years, this felt different. The contours of Tom’s torso had changed while they were apart, as had the lines of his face, and Joseph found himself wanting to explore those differences, catalogue each and every one of them. Joseph had something like shame and something like lust welling up in his gut, all mixed up together and at odds.</p><p>Tom saw Joseph’s stare, and traced a hand over the scar that carved its way across his ribcage. "It glanced over the bone," he said, and Joseph realized (thank God, thank God) that Tom must have mistook his fascination for worry over the injury. "They said if he’d hit me a few inches over I would have bled out right there. I – I can’t stop thinking about it, Joe."</p><p>The shake in Tom’s voice was enough to push Joseph past his fear of revealing himself. He leaned over to take Tom’s hand in his. "You’re here, and the bastard that stabbed you isn’t."</p><p>"It isn’t just him." Tom hesitated, then laid his head down on Joseph’s shoulder. "It’s everything, every night, and I can’t get any goddamned <em>rest</em>."</p><p>Joseph smoothed a hand over Tom’s hair. "I know. We left the war, but it didn’t leave us. I’ve been dreaming as well."</p><p>Tom’s body began to shake with silent sobs, and Joseph held him. That was what older brothers were for, he told himself, to hold their younger brothers on nights like these, and if Joseph was thinking some rather unbrotherly thoughts, there was no way Tom would ever know.</p><p>Tom pulled back, and before Joseph realized what was happening, Tom’s lips were on his. Joseph sank into the kiss, half-convinced this was some strange dream, the product of yet another restless night. Tom’s mouth tasted of salt, and his hands were shaking on top of Joseph’s thighs.</p><p>All too soon, Tom pulled back, and the fear on his face was too close to the fear he’d woken up with. "I didn’t mean to do that. I shouldn’t have done that."</p><p>"It’s all right." That was wholly inadequate. "I was thinking about doing the same thing." Better – the best Joseph could manage.</p><p>Tom’s eyes widened. "Were you," he said, clearly turning over the words in his head.</p><p>"It might help with the nightmares." Joseph couldn’t believe himself, suggesting kissing one’s brother as if it were on par with a mug of warm milk. But it was the darkest hour of the night, and they’d both been up with nightmares, and nothing felt quite real anymore. "Come here, darling."</p><p>Tom flushed red at the endearment, and slid closer to Joseph. Joseph pulled him in for another kiss, sliding a hand to his hip. He didn’t have a blueprint for this. There had been girls he’d courted before the war, and secretive wanks in the trenches, and Tom deserved something different than both of those. Joseph cupped Tom’s cock through his pants, and oh, Tom <em>loved</em> that, gasping and arching up into Joseph’s hand. Joseph wanted to give his brother <em>everything, </em>but before he could even free Tom’s cock from the fabric surrounding it, Tom spent with a gasp that he drowned in Joseph’s mouth.</p><p>Just watching the breathless joy on Tom’s face would have been enough to satisfy Joseph for a lifetime. But Tom looked up at him, biting his lip, and asked, "Can I, er…"</p><p>"Anything you want," Joseph murmured.. He was expecting another kiss, one of Tom’s hands down his pants, but Tom slid down the bed, settling his head between Joseph’s legs. Tom swallowed the head of Joseph’s cock without preamble, and it was wet and unpracticed and Joseph had never felt anything better. He wound his hands through Tom’s hair, guiding him further back when Tom grew too eager and began to gag. Tom had his eyes shut and an incredibly endearing look of concentration on his face. Joseph couldn’t tear his eyes away. He wanted to memorize every moment of this – every slide of Tom’s lips, every flutter of his eyelashes, every moan he let out when Joseph toyed with his hair. He didn’t last much longer than Tom, nudging his brother back and spending across his own abdomen.</p><p>Tom stayed crouched at the bottom of the bed, looking suddenly sheepish, until Joseph gestured for him to come back. He drew Tom in for another kiss, reveling in his newly-swollen lips, and when Joseph released him, Tom nestled into his shoulder.</p><p>"Would you stay the night?" Tom murmured, face going an even brighter red than when he’d first kissed Joseph.</p><p>"Of course." Joseph slid down to put his head in the pillows, drawing Tom down beside him. "If Mother asks, you had a nightmare."</p><p>Tom murmured his thanks into Joseph’s neck. Both of them slept through the night.</p>
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